February gardening

• Dig garden beds and fertilise in preparation for planting spring-flowering bulbs in the next few months. Hyacinths, ranunculi, babianas, anemones and daffodils can be planted when the autumn soil cools down. Daffodils like sun and good drainage.

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• Add elegant richpurple to gardens with the award-winning, Australian-bred salvia ‘Love and Wishes’. In flower for most of the year, it scooped the pool at the UK’s largest horticultural show, the HTA National Plant Show.

•Give the love of your life a gift of a perfumed plant on Valentine’s Day. Roses work for many, but why not a sweet-smelling lavender, beguiling frangipani or lemon-scented myrtle (Backhousia citriodora)?

• Keep summer colour coming from petunias and impatiens with regular doses of liquid fertiliser (flower and fruit formulation). Later this month, pansies appear in nurseries and can keep the show humming through autumn into winter.

• Keep the water up to tomatoes in dry areas to push growth along and protect against blossom-end rot, a nasty problem in which the bottoms of the tomatoes rot.

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• Check for lacebug infestation on azaleas. If present, leaves will have a silvery look on top and a rusty brown appearance underneath. Spray with an insecticide such as MaxGuard.

•Clean out gutters and get rid of rubbish lying around gardens, especially in country and outer areas, to protect against bushfire.

•NSW Christmas bush can be trimmed to encourage growth and flowering next year.

• Knock sucking pests in the vegie patch with a safe insect spray that won’t affect the produce. Products such as Yates Nature’s Way Vegie & Herb Spray don’t have a withholding period, so crops can be eaten after washing.

• For a continuing show of camellia blooms, feed plants with a potash-rich fertiliser.

•Prune geraniums (zonal pelargoniums) by about half to encourage bushiness.

•Cut back hydrangeas that have finished blooming, unless you like to keep the ageing flowers through autumn. A good rule is to make the cut above two buds on the stem.